


TALES FROM SIX FEET UNDER

by anonymau5



Category: Maggot Boy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 14:40:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5378819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymau5/pseuds/anonymau5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Maggot Boy mini, midi and maxi fanfiction!</p><p>(Please take care to read the guidelines!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. *GUIDELINES

*PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES THEY'RE ACTUALLY IMPORTANT

 

**What's happening here?**

A collection of drabbles/mini-fics/standard-sized-fics/occasional-but-don't-count-on-it-probably-long-multi-part-fics! Think of it like Paradox Space for Maggot Boy! "What is Paradox Space," I hear someone shout from the back of the auditorium. I hang my head in disgust and self-loathing, rightly kinkshamed as a dirty Homestuck. This is the worst.

 

**Okay, got it, it's a drabble collection. So... you only have [X-many] stories up. Why so few?**

wwwWELL this has actually been an idea I've had in the works for a while, now. Basically this is going to update with new chapters (each one a new story) periodically.

 

**What does "periodically" mean? You haven't posted a story in years. You're not exactly consistent with your writing.**

hey shut the hell up how about that. how does that sound

 

**I have [X TRIGGER], how am I supposed to know which chapters contain my triggers?**

Each chapter will be appropriately labeled at the beginning with a list of alphabetized TWs/other such warnings. If you have any–and yes, I do mean A N Y–triggers that are not listed, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me on my [tumblr](http://femme-fauxpas.tumblr.com/). I have anonymous messaging enabled and am absolutely more than happy to oblige any and all trigger warnings that I may have failed to include–even if they're specific only to you. You need a TW for shoes? Hmu and I will tag shoes for all future fics involving shoes. You need a TW for a certain animal, illness, phobia? Hmu. You need a TW for Lazaro Palmer? haha don't we all

 

**Your stories kind of suck and I don't really like them that much.**

ikr

 

**Is this just going to be one of those empty promises you make to write cool stuff and then you wind up spiraling into some kind of paranoid breakdown and then just disappearing? You do that a lot, I notice.**

I mean probably


	2. Intro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GENRE:  
> Humor, Gen
> 
> PAIRINGS:  
> None
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER:  
> Cursing, Heavily Formatted, Fire [mention of]

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 **OP: MB Sighting!**  
**FalconWatch01**  
**Sept 5, 2022 09:22 (GMT - 7)**  
    Hey, guys, I know I haven't been to the boards in a while, sorry about that. I've  
    been doing night classes and I've been pretty wrapped up in that what with the  
    semester starting and all. Actually, I hadn't even given the boards any thought  
    until Thursday night coming back from class.

    I saw him again.

    I was at the bus stop at Roosevelt and 22nd, time was approx. 9:30pm. He was  
    like an apparition–I looked up from my phone and there he was at the bodega  
    across the intersection. Absolutely positive it was him, red hoodie with the name  
    tag, dark jeans, red Converse. Not sure what he was doing; appeared to be  
    waiting on someone. Didn't seem to notice me. Tried to take a picture, but it  
    came out very low res. If you were in the Petersburgh area anytime last night, let  
    me know if you saw anything. He left after about two minutes, seemed pissed  
    about something but didn't make any sound–not that I could hear anyway.

 **RE: MB Sighting!**  
**kelcyjuniper**  
**Sept 5, 2022 09:25 (GMT - 7)**  
        can absolutely confirm was mb??? reports of copycats coming from  
        below 88th st, neighbor hill  & eastern point. ps congrats on night classes

 **RE: RE: MB Sighting!**  
**FalconWatch01**  
**Sept 5, 2022 09:41 (GMT - 7)**  
         Thanks Kelcy. I'm sure about this one, it was him. It was dark, but I  
         know his height and I know his build and I can tell you with 99.99%  
         certainty I was looking at Maggot Boy.

         Anybody else notice that in the past 2-3 months he's been with  
         somebody, too??? Really really tall guy, possibly female?? No  
         consistent "costume" that I can speak to, unless anyone's got info  
         different than I do??? Maybe that's who he was waiting for? Anyone  
         with information please respond.

 **RE: MB Sighting!**  
**BLKOP223KY**  
**Sept 5, 2022 09:47 (GMT - 7)**  
      Can confirm reports of sidekick, I've seen the guy. Male, 6'1(ish), very  
      quiet, very slow-moving. PortlandRaider has seen him too, outside P Inst.  
      in Prospect Heights. Frequents Institute. Possible connection???? This  
      has been brought up before and I know we kind of dismissed it but with  
      the recent controversy surrounding the institute I think it kind of warrants  
      the resurrection of this theory?? Pun intended.  
  
**RE: RE: MB Sighting!**  
**FalconWatch01**  
**Sept 5, 2022 09:50 (GMT - 7)**  
        I'm still standing by my original prognosis that the Palmer Institute  
        and Maggot Boy have absolutely nothing to do with one another. It's  
        too much of a stretch. What kind of business in its right mind is  
        going to support vigilante justice? Seems like too much of a reach, I  
        don't buy it. I think it's a very popular conspiracy theory. People will  
        always be willing to look at two isolated incidents and see some  
        connecting thread that isn't there.

        Was I really the only one who saw him Thursday night?

 **RE: RE: RE: MB Sighting!**  
**DEMONPRINCE0**  
**Sept 5, 2022 10:01 (GMT - 7)**  
          MAGGOT BOY IS F CKING SEXAH!  
          sorry i had to say it ;3  
          OH ALSO is anybody hearing reports of a #3???? seen p  
          frequently in presence of mb… army getup, long red hair?  
          little-kid-sized????

          **RE: RE: RE: RE: MB Sighting!**  
**kelcyjuniper**  
**Sept 5, 2022 10:05 (GMT - 7)**  
            reports of little kid are false. there is no #3.

 **RE: MB Sighting!**  
**letrollfaec**  
**Sept 5, 2022 10:06 (GMT - 7)**  
      you leaking assholes need to go make friends jfc there is no maggot boy  
      there is literally nothing except the void and your sad mistakes i hope you  
      all get eaten by mindless and so do your families and that when you're  
      dead and in hell there's a shitty internet connection so that you can't post  
      another thread about how you think you saw mb taking a dump by the  
      brimstone near the pit of fire KBYE

 **RE: MB Sighting!**  
**ellathewolf**  
**Sept 5, 2022 10:10 (GMT - 7)**  
      Falcon, I saw him in Petersburgh Thurs night, too!!! I live on Rosario, two  
      blocks from Roosevelt, and I'm on the ground floor. Saw him outside my  
      window–he was with his friend!! It was crazy, it was like an out-of-body  
      experience, I didn't even know what to think! They sounded really young,  
      like close to my age (18? Give/take?) They were just kind of laughing and  
      kicking stones and talking about a local ska band? They sounded like  
      teenagers. But it was definitely him, I'm sure of it!

  **RE: RE: MB Sighting!**  
**DaveyJonesOwns**  
**Sept 5, 2022 10:12 (GMT - 7)**  
          saw him too! :D actually had a conversation with him. he pulled  
          down his hood for me and let me tell you some shit he is the best  
          looking motherfucker i have seen since titanic. leonardo dicaprio  
          lookin motherfucker. i'd fuck that.

          also he saved a busload of burning children from another busload  
          of burning children that night. we need more men like him in this  
          city.

 **RE: RE: RE: MB Sighting!**  
**kelcyjuniper**  
**Sept 5, 2022 10:18 (GMT - 7)**  
            ????

 **RE: RE: RE: MB Sighting!**  
**AnthonyC**  
**Sept 5, 2022 10:25 (GMT - 7)**  
          Actually, I've heard he was surprisingly ugly for such a young  
          guy. Reports that it was actually his face that set that  
          busload of children on fire.

 **RE: RE: RE: RE: MB Sighting!**  
**DaveyJonesOwns**  
**Sept 5, 22 10:27 (GMT - 7)**  
            fuck you man.


	3. Jar by Jar, Stitch by Stitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Owen takes up sewing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GENRE:  
> Alive!AU, Angst, Family, Fluff
> 
> PAIRINGS:  
> None
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER:  
> Alcohol [mention of], Binge Eating [mention of], Bullying, Dypsphoria [May trigger], Misgendering, Self-Harm [mention of], Transphobia, Violence

“What’s wrong?” Alice asked gently, leaning against the frame of the sliding glass door. She watched her son’s back as he sat, slumped on the steps of the back porch, staring out into the Colorado dusk, a tantrum of color, all fire and wine in mid-September. A few dawdling fireflies–survivors, far and few, like odds and ends leftover from summertime, slow to die–lazed around the backyard air in search of nighttime. He was tense, and he was curled up into himself, hugging an economy-sized jar of Skippy Extra Chunky to his chest, playing sadly with a cereal spoon.

“What makes you think something’s wrong.”

“You only eat peanut butter when you’re sad.”

“I always eat peanut butter.”

“I know.” She uncrossed her arms, gliding across the wood porch to stoop beside her ailing son. “Mind?” She asked, holding out her hand. He sighed, handing her the jar and the spoon before looking away, glaring into some dry, unfed brush by the fence.

“School project,” Owen finally groused, pulling the sleeves of his dark hoodie over his hands.

“Mm. Stressing out?”

Owen snorted heatedly, gathering his knees up into his chest and hugging them like they were a pair of old friends he always met under the same circumstances.

“S'an art project…”

“Oh,” Alice cooed. “You’ve always done alright in art, though. You remember that one sketch you did of Pinball? That was my favorite. I still have that, somewhere.”

“It’s not that kind of project,” he murmured, glaring off into another yard.Alice nodded, turning her attention back to the jar sandwiched between her bony knees. Before she had a chance to reach out to him again, he ground out: “It’s this–this stupid grade-wide ‘Togetherness’ project. The whole ninth grade glass is supposed to–god, it’s so damn _stupid, stupid, stupid!”_ He buried his face in his arms.

“What do you have to do?”

“Sew my fucking name into a square.”

“Language, Owen.”

“It’s so stupid! We’re making this–this quilt, with all our names in it, and you have to sew your own little square with your name and a pattern and–and it’s just– _it’s just_ –” He grunted, fuming and kicking uselessly at dirt.

“That might be fun, though?” Alice offered thoughtfully. “I could help you. Hell I could even do it _for_ you. I sewed when I was a little girl. Does _everybody_ have to sew a square for themselves?”

“If by _'everybody’_ you mean _’everybody with a functioning pair of ovaries’_ then _yes_ , Alice. Everybody has to sew a _rotten-no-good-son-of-a-bitch-square.”_

 

That one took her a second. Owen glared across the yard, visibly incensed, radiating ire from his pores and his hair follicles the tiny open cuts beneath his hangnails. He wore an anger on his face that could have passed for heartbreak.

“The boys are doing the same thing, but with woodcarving,” he went on quietly. “Carving their names into wood.” He balled his hands into fists and worked his jaw. “The girls are… are sewing their names into squares.”

“…Did you speak to someone about letting you do the woodcarving instead?” She asked him, touching his shoulder. He shrugged her off.

“The administration office said that the school 'has a No-Stance Policy on controversial affairs like LGBTQA,’ and to basically just shut up and do the project. That it was about 'artistic exploration’ and 'getting to know your fellow peers,’ and not about politics or 'personal affairs.’” He dropped his head back into his arms. “Can I have my peanut butter back, now?”

Sadly, Alice handed her son the jar, which he took with a muffled “thanks.”

Alice felt something frothy and vinegary churn in the basin of her stomach as she watched her son, sad and small, stew over the cruel and unusual torture that was the world refusing to reconcile him with his identity. She’d seen it ad-nauseum over the years: she remembered the voices of little boys over the dribbling of basketballs, shouting _No Girls Allowed!_ She saw the black eyes, the torn clothing; she’d quizzed him with the _You’re Late For Dinner_ ’s and the _Where Were You_ ’s and watched him fail spectacularly when all he could do was tell the floor that he’d been _Nowhere, Alice, Just Drop It_. She noticed when the peanut butter would go missing, jar by jar. She noticed when the paring knives started disappearing, knife by knife. She noticed when the liquor would drain from the bottle, bead by bead. She noticed her boy having less and less to say at the end of the day, losing a little bit of the light in eyes by the time every Friday rolled around: his personality was fraying and splitting at the seams as he came apart slowly, going stitch by stitch.

“C'mon,” she ground out, pulling the jar out from the cradle of Owen’s arms. “We’re gonna go do the project anyway.”

“Hey, that’s mine!” He called after her. “I don’t want to do the fucking project, Al, I can’t sew worth a damn and besides, I’m not a–”

“I don’t care. Get up,” she demanded. “You’re handing in that project. I’ll sew it for you and you can just–you can call it your own.”

“ _Mom_ ,” he begged, visibly nervous as he twisted himself up to face her. She stood in the doorway, a silhouette contoured in the light of the living room. “ _Please_ don’t make me do this…”

Alice frowned, utterly unmoved.

“I’m sewing you that square, Owen. And you’re going to take that square into school, and if they have any problems with it they can just call me. You tell them that.” Owen furrowed his brow, not quite following. “You tell them if they don’t like the square you give them, you can just try your hand at woodcarving. And _then_ ,” she added, her voice dark and dripping with a retaliatory venom emblematic of a peerless danger known to those, and only to those, who crossed a mother’s son, “you tell them to _call_. _Me_.”

 

In a week’s time, Alice had sewn Owen a gorgeous square, which he’d presented–quite proudly, actually–to his teacher. He’d laid the handsome textile down on the face of the art room table, alongside the girls’ squares, and already its aesthetic pull had reeled a few girls in, who crowded in and cooed in earnest admiration. It was church-wafer-off-white; the girls never thought a color could read with such fragility, such delicacy until now. Curling in from the edge of the frame were withering carnations, all bowing toward the center with deference and patience, like Ladies-In-Waiting in the presence of a queen. Dropping from the carnations were free-falling petals of dying satin, gentle, demure, a yielding in death. Every stitch was pulled and tucked with poise, with graceful confidence and a vigilant eye; it all spoke to a proficiency that straddled mastery. It must have been a steady set of hands that could sew such plush and sumptuous cursive, fixed at the center of the square, lush and tea-rose-pink. Painstakingly sewn in a fine script that dipped and curled and looped like ribbons of forgotten silk–emblematic of a finespun lady’s polished civility, her grace, her petal-perfect decorum–read:

 

**_FUCK YOU._ **


	4. In the Stillness of Remembering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief glimpse into Davey and Marianne's early friendship, and its ultimate, inevitable dive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GENRE:  
> Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort
> 
> PAIRINGS:  
> None
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER:  
> Crying, Emotional Manipulation, Food [mention of], Manipulation, PTSD

The new surgeon they’d hired to study the new zombie they’d hired likes Fleetwood Mac.

 

**_Now here you go again, you say_**

**_you want your freedom._ **

**_Well, who am I to keep you down?_ **

 

 _“Didn’t really peg you for the type, t'b'honest,_ ” some soft, empty-sounding thing from the doorway murmured over the hum of the music, startling Marianne, who was hanging a curtain rod above her office window overlooking the city’s East Side. She touched her chin to her collarbone, boring back over her shoulder to the doorway, where Davey was slumped against the inset of the doorpost. “Fleetwood Mac, I mean.”

Tucking a palmful of cantaloupe-colored fringe behind her ear, she watched him in earnest surprise.

"I wasn't sure you remembered me," Marianne offered with careful delicacy. "You were a little worse-for-wear when they woke you up. I'm Marianne."

"I know," he answered quietly, using his right hand to wring his left wrist. He'd been strapped to a bed until last week–and then, finally, suddenly, and at the behest of a small clan of nervous, socially-conscious interns, they unharnessed him, giving him an office-space-turned-studio-bedroom and a special elevator card which afforded him access only to floors 12 through 14 (all of which, conveniently, were outfitted with stoic, armed guards at every post and turn.) At least they let him walk, now, though–not that there was much of anywhere to go, or much of anything to do. Most of his time was spent waiting; he wasn't sure for what. "You're the new surgeon..."

The two of them searched each other from across the office for one long, glimmering instant before, finally, Marianne swept out her hand, wordlessly inviting him to take a seat on the overstuffed couch. His eyes were big and red and swollen, and they ticked from the couch to her face and back again; he was timid, frightened, loath to grasp at the branch she’d offered out to him, teeming with olives as dark and as green as her eyes.

 

“You don’t have to sit, if you’re not comfortable, Jeremiah,” she offered gently, turning away from him to tap twice at the plastic keys of her glossy Macbook, upping the volume of her Spotify. Gently, she eased back into the small and busying task of righting the curtain rod. “But you don’t have to sequester yourself, either. This is all very scary, I’m sure–but nobody’s here to hurt you.”

Closing his eyes, he listened to the lapping waves of Nicks’ vocals, swelling at the crest and foaming as it broke open, crumbling like a bath bomb onto the face of the shore, pulling grains of sand inward and into her as she faded out from the shoreline of his outer ear. Adrift in the moment, he sagged against the doorframe and watched Marianne unpack a cloth shopping bag full of mismatched provisions: a thick slice of Lush soap, wrapped in brown paper; two small cellophane bags of popcorn, bundled up in red twine, with two small cardboard squares tied to each with pieces of red string which read _“To Laura”_ and _“To Yousef,”_ respectively; a packet of tan, personalized stationary; an overstuffed envelope, thick with invoices and receipts for incoming medical supplies. In her free hand, she sipped two dollars’ worth of coffee from the bakeshop down the drive.

“Fleetwood Mac is my favorite,” she offered cooly, ripping open a plastic packet of Bic pens and depositing them into an oversized, carnation-pink coffee cup on her desk. She looked over her shoulder, back at him; he still stood in the doorway, his muscles tight, his bones locked together, his eyes to the floor. “What are your thoughts? Yea or nay?”

He shrugged at the floor.

“Hey. _Psst_.” She snapped her fingers playfully, triggering a startled kickback: his gaze shot up to meet her, and she was all smiles when she told him: “I’m not on the floor. I’m up here.”

He made a small, apologetic hum of a noise, holding onto the doorpost as though it would save him from all this.

“You don’t need to be so scared, Jeremiah,” she promised him earnestly. “We don’t need to be friends, if that makes you upset–but I’d like it if you weren’t afraid of me.” She picked up the brick of hard soap with one delicate hand, as though it were a piece of critical circumstantial evidence to her claim, and shrugged with apologetic playfulness. “I’m a big mush, to tell you the honest truth.”

He smiled sadly, hugging himself and ghosting across the carpeted floor to the couch; he deposited himself into it, letting it swallow him up like the waning light of dusk. Marianne smiled, fit to busy herself again with the rod above her window.

“You’re not–” He coughed, his voice cracking with disuse. “…You’re not _afraid_ of me?”

She stopped to stare out beyond the windowpane, out into the burning swell of the cityscape; her eyes flickered between the faces of each of the buildings to the east, all of them aglow with orange from the sun setting to the west. She turned to face him, sadness bleeding into the corners of her mouth and the arches of her eyebrows.

_“Jeremiah…”_

From his nest on the couch, he read the sideways names of the tomes that teemed on her shelves: _Locusts and Wild Honey, Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body, The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality, Civil Disobedience,_ Julia Child’s _Mastering the Art of French Cooking, A Room of One’s Own, Thoratic Surgery Atlas, Sabiston and Spencer’s Surgery of the Chest. Master’s Guide to Poker._ That last one didn’t seem at home with the others. “It’s uh–it’s,” he swallowed, wringing his hands.

“It’s Davey. It’s…”

_Master’s Guide to Poker._

“…it’s Davey.”

 

**_Like a heartbeat it drives you mad._ **

**_In the stillness of remembering what you had,_ **

 

He took to her like vines to a fencepost.

She never wore perfume of any kind, but her shampoo was always rich and complicated, and always smelled like warmth: today it reminded him of roasted almonds, folded in honey, but tomorrow it could smell like four-o-clocks, and baked pears the day after that. She smelled like a mom, Davey thought–warm and clean and sweet. It made Davey embarrassed to get too close to her. It made him conscious of how _he_ must have smelled, sick and fleshy and ripe like a sack of sinkwater-wet chicken bones left out to soak on a slab of August-baked sidewalk. Marianne never mentioned it, though–in fact, the objective grisliness of Davey’s bodily condition seemed to just… glaze on over her, like rainwater on a windshield ( _“Honey,” she’d told him once after he’d overheard an intern complaining about the rancid tang radiating from him. She had been bending over to pull a tupperware packed with dough from the back of her mini-fridge, but she tossed her hair over one shoulder, lifted her nose in haughty disdain like the pair of them were too major-league to tame haters, looked him right in the eye and said: “Everybody stinks. Sometimes you just can’t smell it with your nose. You just remember that.”_ )

 

_**and what you lost.** _

 

“Please don’t leave me,” Davey whispered unsteadily, hugging her tight, like he thought if he clung hard enough, she could peel his soul clean from his body cavity. “Please don’t make me stay here by myself again. Plea-ease, I can’t do it again, Ms. Hyde, I can’t spend the whole ni-ight alone again, she’s in my _dreams_ , she keeps hu-urting me. Don’t make me, don’t make me–”

“Oh _God_ , _Jeremiah_ –” Sam soothed, but hearing his birthname only made him start to choke on the afterbirth of his hysterics. Startled, awestruck, all she could do was tighten the clutch and bury her top lip in the bend of his outer-ear. “It’s gonna be okay.”

 

_**Thunder only happens when it’s raining.** _

 

 _“She sai-aid we were f-friends,_ ” Davey whispered into Sam’s neck. “ _She told me she cared about me. Why did she hurt me? Why did she-e...”_

 

_**Players only love you when they’re playing.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this isn't any good but it's been sitting around for a solid two years so here it is (fistful of crumpled confetti)
> 
> Lyrics:  
> Dreams - Fleetwood Mac


	5. You, Without Anthony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If it makes you less sad, I will die by your hand.  
> I hope you find out what you are. I already know what I am.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: BE ADVISED THAT THIS IS AN EXTREMELY TRIGGERING PIECE FOR VICTIMS OF PHYSICAL/EMOTIONAL ABUSE. This was a vent piece that I made a point of only working on during bad stints, so a lot of General Yuckiness was poured into this. Please do both of us a favor and DON'T PROCEED if you are triggered by, seriously affected by, or upset by depictions of emotional/physical abuse, bullying, or Stockholm Syndrome/general romanticizing of one's abuser. Seriously, the next chapter’s gonna be Chavey, just wait for that.
> 
> WARNINGS FOR:  
> Abuse, Graphic Depictions of  
> Abuser Worship  
> Bulimia, Mention of  
> Gore, Graphic Depictions of  
> Bullying, Graphic Depictions of  
> Deadnaming  
> Hallucinations  
> Hanging, Mention of  
> Heavily Formatted (Not intended for mobile)  
> Love/Hate (Non)Relationship  
> Stockholm Syndrome  
> Suicide, Mention of  
> Transphobia, Explicit  
> Unrequited Affection  
> Violence, Graphic Depictions of

is this Owens phone?  
5:39 AM

yes?  
5:41 AM

Owen hey its Anthony  
5:41 AM

you there  
6:06 AM

ik you just got out on sunday & started back at school on wed and so youre probably catching up on all your hw and getting settled back into the routine & everythgni. sorry if im distracting you  
6:11 AM

*everything  
6:12 AM

listen i know you dont want to talk to me. i wouldnt want to talk to me either if i were you.  
6:39 AM

im sorry.  
6:39 AM

for everything  
6:39 AM

i wanted to know if we could talk. are you free after school?  
6:40 AM

Owen?  
6:54 AM

_"         O        w      e  n ?"_

_His voice phases in like a whisper of smoke, threading through the silk and the thick of the dark. You can't see anything; the vacuum of the void has swallowed you. You can only hear his voice, fluttering and swollen and wet with worry that's come only moments too late._

_"Owen, you alright, man? C'mon, O, get up–shit. Fuck. He's really fucked up. Shit."_

_"He's bleeding everywhere, Jesus Chr–Owen! C'mon man, wake up! Shit. Shit."_

_"Anth–yo, hooly shit. Whose blood is that? Whose blood–yo, whose blood is that? Is that Owen? What happened?"_

_"Just shut up and help me wake him up, man, fuck! Fuck. This is fucked. I didn't mean to hit him that fucking hard, shit. Owen! Come on, man, don't do this–"_

_"Dude. Dude, we gotta go. Dude, this is fucked, you gotta go, you gotta go right now–I'll cover for you. I'll cover for you, alright? I'll just say I found him like this, that I didn't see who did it–"_

_"What?! Dude that's fucked up! I... I don't know what to do, fuck. Fuck. I didn't mean to hit him that hard, man."_

_"What's done is done, man, but you gotta go. Okay? You gotta go right now."_

_“Fuck, I–I don't–I don't know–shit. Shit!"_

_"Anth this is the kind of shit people get expelled for, okay?! This is the kind of shit that ends up on the news or some shit, man, you gotta go like right now!"_

_"Fuck. Okay. Fuck! Owen? Owen! He's not waking up. Fuck. What if he tells somebody. Shit."_

_“He’s not gonna fuckin' tell nobody, okay, he's a loner."_

_"But what if he tells someone?! Anyone–his parents, a friend, I mean if–"_

_"Man he doesn’t have friends! He’s got nobody, man, he ain't gonna tell nobody!"_

_"His tooth's all fucked up. Look at it, man–shit. Shit."_

_"Anthony, GO! Go right now, I'll wait five minutes and then I'll grab a teacher, say I found'm here. They'll take'm to the nurse's office, he'll be fine. No one'll know, okay?"_

_"Fuck, I–okay, I'm gonna–" You can hear him dither for a moment, not sure whether to stay or to go. Then you hear his breathing get right up into your space: he smacks you hard and your head aches. "You hear me, Owen? Owen. Listen to me, kid."_

_"Hnn..."_

_"Open your eyes, man. Listen to me."_

_“Nnn... hnng..."_

_"If you ever breathe a word of this–" he promises, steady and quiet, dark and determined, "–to anybody_

_"I' l l   k   i    l    l      y      o         u          .            "_

listen   
6:59 AM

im going to be at ozo after 2:30 today  
7:01 AM

ill be there until 6. it'll just be me  
7:01 AM

if you want to meet me there, thats where you can find me. if you dont show up ill understand.  
7:02 AM

Ozo  
7:11 AM

downtown  
7:11 AM

is that okay? do you need directions? if its too out of the way we can do someplace else  
7:12 AM

no.  
7:13 AM

that's fine. i finish myNHS meeting at 3:30. i'll meet you at 4.  
7:13 AM

great! :) ill see you then  
7:14 AM

    This is it.

    You're not sure what kind of trick this is, or what he plans to do with you once you meet with him, but it doesn't matter; you shrug your backpack on numbly and ghost out the door and through the hall, zeroing in on the kitchen with a clinical and unswerving precision that speaks to a sureness so exhilerant and so vivifying that you almost manage to lose yourself in it. Your soft, sock-footed tread affords you the stealth and the silence you need to seep into the kitchen as noiselessly and as organically as a shadow. Somewhere else, Alice is applying two terse pats of baked Laura Mercier to each cheek, thoroughly unaware of your movements. It's only a one-story home, and it isn't hard to hear the whine of a floorboard or the pealing of stirred silverware through the walls. You just want to be careful. One mistake and they'll send you back t  -  h erre  .

You ease toward the kitchen, dawn-soaked and steeped in the first blush of daylight in January. In that tea-sweet, breakfast-crumb hour before the sleepy baritone snore of the school bus engine comes humming to the curb, the dawn is soft, the lights are off and the house is still asleep. You ghost through the soft light of the kitchen, a dark spot–wraithlike and spectral, with all the eerie accord of a man at the morning of his hanging. You bend past the island counter, locked on a course to the k  
        k k -      n if-e blo ck  
beside the fridge, where it has been waiting for you.

With one slow, certain hand, you close your fist around the handle of a wide-blade Victorinox from the knifeblock. The room stretches like taffy; some wet baste of water and sugar starts pilling and beading and leaking in driblets of color and concept until the room is in a steady drip. Somewhere long and faraway behind you, the morning snores of the sleepy kitchen wh  - isss -pe r s fragments of mem- o   -     ry y. Materiality begins to fail you.

_"Oh, Alice…” He baits teasingly, barb and spur and spine. "What's the matter? You scared, little man?"_

You unsheathe the knife.

_"Well you should be." He holds your trophy like a truncheon. There are pretty blue branches of veins in his hands, each of them pulsing with the promise that you will hurt, that you will bleed. "I’ll find you, kid. Just you wait until I find you.”_

The world around you moves in spits and glitches. Dizzy, exhausted, the realization dawns on you that you could open your throat right here and just be done with it.

_"Come out, come out, wherever you are..." You can hear him smiling. "C'mon, princess, come out and face me like a man."_

You could run. You've done it before. 

_"There we are," he purrs, and drapes himself across the doorpost like he's drunk. He smiles down at you and in the worst possible way, the promise of pain and tears and public humiliation in the cut of his smile feels—somewhere inside of you—like home. It's the closest you've ever been to a person; it's the only time anyone has gone out of their way to come and find you while you hide in the storage closet, shivering and small like a wet animal. Sometimes after he beats you, he uses the pad of his thumb to teasingly press away a bead of tearwater and it does things to you. Your inside cringe. You want to spit in his face, you want to press your thumbs into his eyes and pop them like soft plums. You want to grab a fistful of his hair and wrench it out; you want a wedge of meat and hair, of throbbing scalp and root basted in blood. You want to stuff the carnage in your mouth and eat it so that the doctors can't sew it back and he'll be ugly forever, just like you. You want to throw your arms around his midriff and cling to him, you want to sob and beg him not to leave you alone in that closet again when he's done painting you black and blue. You want to be his best friend in secret, you want him to adopt you like a little brother, because no one but Anthony has ever treated you like you deserved to be treated: like nothing. Like less than nothing. He is the only person who has ever really looked at you and saw you. There will never be anyone else like him. You want to tell him so. He is the only person who has ever paid you any real mind, and this is the closest thing you have ever felt to affection, and you don’t want to be by yourself again._

You watch the knife, like if you wait long enough it'll make this decision for you. He wouldn't be able to find you in hell. He'd have to pick through fields of fire ad infinitum. He'd never find you. He wouldn't. You could go and you could hide there–from him, from the noise, from all of this.

_When he's finished beating you, you stagger home, slavering dribble and gore the whole way; it tells a terrible story that begins in a vacant hallway after school and ends at your bedroom nightstand, and with two unsteady hands you've already started pulling it to the center of the room. It leaves an indent in the carpet where it stood. You set it down directly beneath the light fixture in the ceiling. You climb on top of it._

You swallow, staring at your reflection in the blade. He looks exhausted. You begin to reconsider.

_It isn't enough to sever the vertebrae. The drop was too short, the rope was too cheap. You dangle for seventy-six agonizing seconds without breath. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi. Five Mississippi. Six Mississippi. Seven Mississippi. Eight Mississippi. On the seventy-seventh second, the braid snaps and deposits you onto the carpet._

 

 

_And then: silence._

 

 

_Empty space._

 

 

_Strobes of red and blue like searchlights from God._

 

 

_A faraway signal beeps every one and a half seconds: carols sung from hell._

 

 

_You did it. You really did it. You're finally dead._

 

 

_And then, harrowingly, heinously, unforgivably: yo-uare - aw      -ak   e._

 

...No.

No.

You won't slip quietly out of this life and into the next.

Not without him.

* * *

You've arrived.

You're received by the din of silverware, the searing hiss of espresso being made. A popular cafe–wooden and sunny, spacious and busy–bustles on despite you: the pots of dark Sumatran coffee on the burners and the wedges of soft cake in the display case whip together something so warm and enticing that for one wonderful instant you nearly forget what brought you here. You look around, stomping a rind of packed snowpowder off your boots. 

It's the late-afternoon-crowd. It’s quasi-congested—not so crammed that you can't see across the cafe, but busy enough that you have to scan each table, swathed in four-o-clock sunshine, to pick him from the crowd. You find each other at the same time, it seems like; he's off to the right, at a table by himself, and your gazes stick together for a long moment of quiet, suspended disbelief, like a pair of ghosts who find each other again, long after death.

_"              G           o       d   –   p  l  e a s e, please don't–don'tdon'tdon'tdon'tdon't-"_

_"------- ---- ---, -ttemp-d suic--e, l-ss of oxy--- -- --- --a--"_

_"--ti--- -- exh------g cyano-is of t-- ---- -nd nec-, ----- ----"_

_"--- obstru---- -irway-. - ---- pul----r"_

_"No–FUCK, NO! GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME, DON'T TOUCH ME–" You've never heard yourself at this volume. A half-dozen monsters sewn of darkness, of oil, of spacetime surround you as you lay there, as small and as helpless as a newborn. They've got you now. You've never been so scared in all your life._

_"Ge- -u------y i- ----!"_

_"----!"_

_“Please–" you plead, and you look at one of them. It has no eyes and no mouth, and it leaks a soup of molten grease all over you. You've never been this close to the oil before, but now you're so close you can smell it. It smells like burning hair and tangy old pennies and loose, infected, malabsorbed shit. It bubbles and boils like a stew of raw sewage. They're getting it all over you. It's in your mouth, it's matting your hair. They want you to swallow some of it so that it can live and grow inside of you until it gets strong enough to kill you from the inside._

_There are four of them fighting to hold you down, and they're trying to strap your wrists down to a bed. You feel like you've been screaming for hours–you don't remember how you got here or who you came with. You only remember a long echo of your own screaming that reaches years behind you, as though you never really started and you'll never really stop–as though you have always been screaming, as though all your life you have been screaming. Maybe you always have._

_"Please," you implore again, trying to reason with it. You think it's looking at you but you can't be sure. "Where are my parents? Where did you take my mom and dad? I want to go home. I don't want to be here, don't make me stay here–“_

_They all ignore you, shouting things at one another in a language you don't understand._

_"- ---- --enty tw- --- --"_

_"-- ---d oxyg-- --- - -ed in --- -ediatri- ICU ----"_

_"--- ----- -- ---d re--------"_

_"I can't understand you," you whisper, your voice shaking. You pull on your wrist restraints and you scream it again, as if volume was the problem: "I CAN'T UNDERSTAND YOU!"_

_"-t-aum--induce- --llucina--ons, symp--matic o- ------------," one of them tells another._

_"-- --."_

_"ALICE!" You scream, hoping she'll hear you, but she doesn't. They try to stifle your wailing as a few other black things crowd outside the door to your room, making noises that sound like questions. "TOM! HELP ME! DON'T LEAVE ME HERE!"_

_"- ----- ---- -- --its  of halope--do-"_

_It's hopeless. No one can understand you._

_"I want my mom and dad…” you sob again, dropping your head back onto the bed. "I wa-ant to go home..."_

_"---  ge- - -       h- -  - --- --oor."_

_They put something sharp inside your hip. You wish they would just kill you so that it would be over with. Everything softens a shade or two._

_"I want..." You slur unsteadily, your head lolling off to the side. You can't remember what you want. "H'm, my... go to... home, and..."_

_"--'- ----. --'- ----."_

_"Nnh..."_

_…Some last vestigial crumb of latent insurgency in the nucleus of you, some last little whisper of a will to live sighs some soft promise of hope for tomorrow:_

_You will make Anthony Chainey pay for putting you here._

_You will make him suffer as you have suffered._

_And then, at long last–and together–the two of you wil l f i n a  l   l    y     d       i        e          ._

The memory evaporates into steam, leaving only you and Anthony, sitting across from each other at a coffee house table. He's looking at you in this funny way that nobody's ever looked at you before. He looks like he's grateful, but you don't know for what.

"Did you want to get something?" He asks you, looking earnest and cordial. No-good shape-shifting fucker that he is; he really thinks you're going to buy into this simulated ceasefire using nothing more than a phony smile and a little bit of counterfeit amnesty. It takes the undivided attention of every atom in your body to keep yourself from launching across the table and strangling him right there. "They have these awesome slow-cooker chais. You still really into tea and all that?"

"I'm fine, thank you." You position your bag against your calf with the mouth of the zipper agape so that, when the moment comes, you'll have your knife tucked between his ribs before he even sees you cross the tabletop.

He nods, very polite, and trifles with his cup of tempered fair-trade; it's cooled, but it doesn't look like he's had so much as a sip. He turns the brown-as-toast paper cup in his hands and does this thing where he tenses into himself. You'll give his performance this much: the act holds water. If you didn't know him like you did, you'd think that was contrition in the pleats and gathers of his tensed expression.

But you do know him. There's nothing warm in him–the same way that there's nothing warm in you. It is the only thing the two of you have ever had in common.

"How..." He's not sure how to start all this. Maybe he's having second thoughts. Maybe he's realizing, suddenly, how many witnesses there will be to whatever misery he has waiting to inflict on you. You don't know. "How have you been?"

"Alright."

"You put on weight," he remarks, and manages to look relieved. "You look good, man."

"Thanks," you acknowledge colorlessly. Not as though you had a choice. They kept a painstaking audit of your weight in the psych ward, fattening you up with a serving of Ensure at every meal as though you were some depleted, starving thing handpicked from the frothing gutters of the Third World, and then keeping you under the auspices of both the nurses and the orderlies, who populated the lunchroom and the halls and the day-rooms in pocks like ingrown hairs. They'd catch you sneaking crescent crusts of toast and single servings of marmalade and small plastic cups of sweet, lumpy pudding out of the lunchroom in your armpits or under your shirt to be cached, consumed and purged at a later time. Despite having kept it quiet all these years (Mom and Dad didn't think twice when you'd excuse yourself after stuffing your face at the dinner table, and at school the shrill of piss and the hum of the air dryers made for adequate sound cover,) it took the hospital approximately no time at all to figure you out before you even had a chance to figure yourself out. They knew the song and dance and as soon as they caught a whiff of sick on you they'd locked you in a room with a shrink and a nutritionist who ran old lines like We Know You're Hurting and But Think of the Damage You're Doing to Your Body and You Don't Want to Go Back Onto Suicide Watch, Do You? on you. When all was said and done, it felt like they had pried your hands open and took something precious from you, like a baby blanket or an old photo. You felt violated. Your whole stay in that hellhole felt like a violation. You spent the balance of your stay quietly and compliantly spading forkfuls of white powdered potatoes and soft, overcooked noodles into your face. 

You played by the rules. No binging. No purging. No scratching. No stabbing your mattress with steak knives and no banging your head on the walls. 

It was a nightmare.

"I'm just–" He swallows. He shifts. He looks you in the eye and then he doesn't. "I'm glad you decided to come, man."

Oh, you're sure he's  _giddy_.

"I'm not really sure where to start," he says, and you notice that he can't make himself look at you. Good. You hope the medicated apathy you wear in your eyes like two discs of fog are seared into his memory for the rest of his natural life, of which only a sliver remains. "I thought I'd never see you again."

You don't say anything because your presence today says enough. Here you are.

He stares at the scars the rope left on your neck, semi-permanent ribbons of scar tissue; they're long and dark and out there, like a pair of flatlines. You remember a doctor telling you that even with scar cream, they would never really go away without some kind of plastic surgery. 

“I just–” He watches you, wide-eyed, and be rubs his arms like he’s trying to warm himself up. “I don’t–I wanted to…” His gaze falters and drops to the tabletop, red and glossed with finish, and his whole body sags. He wears this blank, helpless stare that makes you want to deck him clean across the jaw. “I left Zeke.”

You narrow your eyes.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time just… by myself, thinking. Haven’t really been around my friends much.” He furrows his brow, like he’s been hurt. “And I–I’ve been getting help. I know that doesn’t mean anything now, but I thought it just–“

“What are you saying to me,” you ask, slowly.

“I don’t know,” he says hoarsely, looking into his coffee. “I–“

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” You ask, a little louder without intending to be. You laugh, even though you don’t mean to do that, either. “Is this an  _apology?”_

“Owen, I–”

“You’re saying sorry? You’re _sorry?!_ ” You’re raising your voice. “Is that it, is that what you’re saying, that you’re sorry?! That you didn’t ask me here so that they–” you gesture frantically to the couple seated next to you–likely two cohorts of Anthony’s you haven’t met yet–who look confused and surprised, “–can–can–can what, Anthony?! Light my hair on fire?! Dump coffee on me when I’m not looking?”

“It’s not a trick, I swear to God, man, I know, I know I don’t deserve it but please just trust me wh—"

“ _TRUST_  YOU?!” You practically scream it. People are looking at you. You’re standing up. You didn’t mean to stand up, but you guess that’s where you are now. You’ve knocked his coffee onto the floor.

You feel all the blood in your body pool in your ears and your cheeks as you watch one another, breathlessly—the whole cafe, breathlessly—waiting for the other to make a move. He looks–he looks cut, he looks sad, he wears his skin like a pelt of sagging roadkill. You can’t believe it. You can feel a plume of hurt erupt onto your face—followed by a nuclear aftershock of rage. All at once you’re moving.

“Owen—hold on!”

You grab your bag and head for the back exit before your maneuvers even hit your conscious roster: stabbing leads to gash leads to blood leads to cops leads to jail cell leads to bail money leads to courtroom leads to sentencing leads back to the psych ward. You can’t. You can’t. It’s been hardwired into you, now, this reflexive repulsion to violence. A hundred thoughts swarm your head at once. You’ve just—you’ve got to get out of here.

You press your open palms against the door and escape–out into twenty-degree weather, out into the frigid air that slaps you clean across the face and lights up your lungs twin cracks of electricity.

You hear him calling your name from behind you. Owen. O w  e   n    .

_"    O   w  e  n ? Honey, look at me."_

_You unsnap your gaze from the window facing the southern grounds and paste it to the blonde-haired, saggy-skinned candy striper at the medicine window. She holds out a small cup of mismatched pills: two discs of pressed chalk, one capsule of dark pink gel, and a white tablet the size of a grain of rice._

_"Verify your name and date of birth?"_

_"Owen Wright," you recite dizzily. "November 10th, 2008."_

_"There we are." She makes a checkmark on a clipboard and hands you your marbles for the day. She then audits your tongue and cheeks with a tiny flashlight to make sure you've swallowed everything. "Have a nice morning, dear."_

_Like clockwork, at breakfast and at bedtime they give you pills in little paper cups with a half-a-cup of water to wash it down. The pills were blue when you started: Olanzipine, Dr. Dhawan explained, which made your feet numb and your head throb. They trashed those and started giving you little pink capsules of Lithium; your tongue shriveled up and you didn’t shit for a week. You cycled through pill after pill after pill after pill: some gave you nightmares and some made you bounce off the walls and some made you weepy and some made you angry and some brought the oil back, oozing through windowsills and dangling out of the showerheads, dribbling down the hairy drains like egg yolks. They’ve got you on Risperadone, now, and they seem happy with the results. It makes the front of your forehead feel like it’s stuffed with tissue paper, but they say that’ll go away in a couple weeks’ time. The little grain of rice they feed you is a new addition: something for kids who have too much energy half the time and spend the other half depressed and alone. You don't remember what it's called but you've been taking those for a few days and they make you feel wiggly and gelatinous, like a carton of spoiled milk gone solid. Brainlessly, you ghost into the dayroom._

_You sit on a couch and pick up a hardcover picture book: Know Your ABC's! Figures. There's real little baby nutcakes here, too, besides the older nutcakes like you; they keep you separate for the most part but in the shuffle of the hospital some of the baby stuff inevitably ends up in your space. You thumb through it, turning leaf after leaf: A for Apple. B for Balloon. C for Cake._

_Your days come piecemeal, to be taken in three parts: prescription, counsel and boredom. Pills in the morning, single and group therapy in the afternoon and petty distraction in the evening—puzzles and picture books, gluey paint and PBS. If you have to watch another Antiques Roadshow appraisal or Martha Stewart bake another torte you think you might kill someone._

_You should be heading to breakfast now, but after that you'll have your shrink, and you're not looking forward to that. When you were first admitted you swore to yourself you'd safeguard everything—but she just... has this way of prying things out of you. She crosses her dark and dainty legs and you, your head in your hands, give her everything on silver plating: the dark spots, the oil, the itch for gore and bloodshed. A for Abnormal. The emotional eating in absence of friendship, in the presence of corpulent course-loads and unrealistic expectations furnished unto you by your Advanced Placement classes. B for Bulimia. You even tell her about Anthony. When you're done, and you've got your head in your hands, and you lack for any more secrets to give lay out at her feet like sacrifices to an old god, she tells you—gently, she's always speaking gently—that you talk about him like he's important to you. It reminds her, she tells you, of Stockholm Syndrome. C for Crazy._

_She says this actually isn't unusual, for victims to exalt their abusers—to deify and adore the people who've hurt you—because even though you may have had his disdain, his cruelty, and his ridicule, at least you had his attention._

_That's something you were starved for, she tells you: attention. Validation. Meaningful connection with other human beings. In the absence of that, she says, Anthony acted as your closest substitute for kinship and repose. It sounded a little, she ventures, like you thought he was your friend._

_Candidly, you think she's full of dog shit. You tell her so. If she's the least bit ruffled, she certainly doesn't show it._

_You ghost through the rest of the day—therapy, ham sandwich and Ensure, therapy again—and wind up right back where you started: in the dayroom, turning through picture books. Everything is circles, here: you go forward and you wind up right back where you started. There are better ways to live, sure—but there are worse._

_The truth is that, discounting the seldom spates of agitation like today's, your little vacation is pretty uneventful, all things considered. Not too much happens here. Every here and again, you'd watch with the crowd as a kid would be dragged off, kicking and screaming, to isolation. They bring it on themselves, of course: they're picking on the orderlies or they're throwing supplies in the art room or they're making a scene over what's being served for dinner. You were one of them, at first. After a while, you just learn to keep your head low. Truth be told, the drugs make you warm and kind of sleepy anyway, and they make the violent itches soften and melt like chocolate candy left in a hot car. You're not sure how you feel about that. You always sort of wished they'd go away, but now that they are—you find yourself missing them._

_You miss a lot of things you didn't think you'd end up missing, you think to yourself as you trace your finger along a single letter of your alphabet pictur e  b  o   o   k    :     A_

“    O   w  e n."

The cold crashes back into you, the milieu breaks like a wave and color and matter swell and surge back into everything–all things undulating, all things rippling back into tactility and solidity. Exhausted, you spin around to see him in the mouth of the doorway. His eyes, like your eyes, are vacant, and that’s when it really hits you that he meant it. The stupid son of a bitch meant every word. He was sorry. It was over.

“Don’t come any closer,” you tell him, holding your weapon with both hands at arms length. You notice, between flakes and scabs of glittering snowfall, that the knife is shivering.

He lets the heavy door slam closed behind him. Like a farewell celebration thrown by your never-ending stupidity, you become oriented to your surroundings and realize that your “escape” had deposited you to into boxed alleyway behind the restaurant where bottles and crates in membranes of soft snow were stocked. Four brick walls box you in—the metal door that you had come through is your only outlet, which Anthony has successfully obstructed.

He looks at the knife not like an unexpected guest, but like a creditor who at long last has come to collect.

“If you want to kill me,” he laments exhaustedly, "you should just do it."

“I will,” you promise him, and steady your hand. “I will. If your sorry ass has any other _dramatic last words_ , I’d spit them out now.”

“No,” he says tiredly. “I don’t.”

You tighten your jaw. You’re emotional, you’re hysterical–coasting on histrionics like this you’re liable to say something stupid and dangerous, something you can’t retract. Under no circumstances should you even consider saying what you’re–

“I really didn’t mean  _anything_  to you, then, did I?”

…thinking. Dammit.

You've got his attention, now, though.

"I don’t understand...”

“Of course you don’t,” you hiss. “You never follow through on anything, do you? You’ve half-assed your whole life and you’ll half-ass your death, too. You’re  _pathetic_. I hate you. I  _hate_  you.”

“I know you do," he says, staring at a stack of empty wine bottles by the brick wall.

He looks like he's trying not to cry. You wonder, distantly, if you look like you're trying not to cry, too.

“It’s really over.” You giggle, and you feel like you’re coming apart a little at the seams. “It’s really done, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he answers tiredly, looking just as wrung and as disappointed as you do, you’re sure. The honesty in his expression hurts. “It is.”

“So–” You start helplessly, and you can hear your voice cracking. You can see the knife shivering. Once, when you were a little kid, you got lost in a busy ShopRite, and this feels a little like that. “So what do we do now?”

He shrugs, and his shoulders sag.

“We could be friends,” he tries, sounding hopeful. You ignore every butterfly it gives you in your belly.

“That won’t work,” you tell him tiredly–and you knew that. You both knew that. But it was—it was a nice thought. God, it was a nice thought.

"What do you want us to be?" You've never heard him speak in so soft a tone—which doesn't seem fitting, because you've never been asked so hard a question. What did you want from him? Where was this going? Where would it end? Would he leave you alone for a little while, only to slowly relapse into twice-weekly beatings and bra-snappings like an addict to the drink? Would he break away from you today never to speak a word to you again, only to smile politely as you passed in the halls? Would his tastes change? Would he hurt someone else in your place? Did you care—and if you did, was it for the new victim's sake, or because

because you'd miss it? You hate yourself for admitting it, but you'd—you'd miss him. You'd miss this. You'd miss the attention, the contact, being someone's something, even if you'd never know what that something was.

You don't have any other friends, after all. Your mom and dad love you, but they're scared of you, and scared for you. Other kids pick on you, but not like Anthony. Anthony sought you out, made you a priority. You became relevant in one another’s lives. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to you, and it was the only thing that ever meant anything to you.

Twenty minutes ago the plan was that you were supposed to die together this afternoon. What are you supposed to do now, if you let him go home—if you go home yourself? What happens tomorrow, when you hallucinate again, or when the itching comes back? Even with your expensive antipsychotics and your thrice-weekly intensive therapy, it's not like everything's magically solved itself. You're still a sick person. You're still by yourself. You're still you. Except now, you're just... you without Anthony.

You don't want to be you without Anthony.

"I don't have anybody else," you tell him, and he watches you. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I honestly don't know," he says. "Maybe one day, if you ever decide to forgive me—which you don't... you don't have to. I know that... But if you did decide to, then maybe one day we could... be friends? You and me?"

You don't say anything, because you hate him, and you hate him for doing this to you, for leaving you like this: missing him, pining for him like a kitten crying for an abusive owner. You hate yourself even more for it.

You drop the knife into the snow, letting your arms fall limply at your sides as you stare dizzily into the glitter of snowfall.

"Woah—" He chirps, seeing you sway; all at once he rushes forward, collecting you as you crumple like wet origami. "You good?"

Miserably you rest your head against his chest, staring out into the slow shower of flitting snowfall, wafting and glitzing like tinsel and metal scrap in the waning salmon sunlight. Late in the cold day, in the thin of January, Anthony Chainey wraps his arms around you and connects with you for what might be the very last time in either of your lives.

"Everything is different," you mourn wetly.

"I know."

"I don't know where to go from here..."

"Me neither."

“It’ll never get any better, will it?” You hear yourself asking sadly. He hugs you tighter, and with your ear against his chest you hearken unto all the same sad sounds and echoes in him that you'd heard in you.

“No,” he soothes, rubbing circles on your back. “It’ll be okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

Yo   -u    h     -o  pe so-     .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PAIRS WELL WITH (/inspired by:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2RY26wQkc8
> 
> Friendly reminder that you are not/never will be obligated to forgive your abusers. Not that forgiveness is really what happened here so much as, crumpling in exhaustion, but?? You get the idea.


End file.
